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By Thomas Scripps

The massacres of Palestinian civilians by Israel over the weekend continued Monday.

Artillery, drone and airstrikes were launched against the Nuseirat, al-Bureij and al-Maghazi refugee camps, the cities of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and Rafah in the south, and Gaza City in the north.

Two people were injured at a power station near Nuseirat, a day after the Abu Araban school in the camp was targeted—the fifth Israeli strike on a school-shelter in eight days—killing 15 people and wounding dozens. The Haza health ministry announced Monday that the death toll had increased to 22. Thousands of displaced Palestinians had been housed in the complex.

Shelling in al-Bureij landed in a schoolyard, of Abu Helu School, injuring one person.

The Abu Araban massacre followed the slaughter of 92 people at al-Mawasi, a supposed “safe zone”, on Saturday. Thirty-year-old Aya Mohammad, a survivor of the attack, described Monday how “the ground shook underneath my feet and the dust and sand rose to the sky and I saw dismembered bodies,” adding, “Where to go is what everybody asks, and no one has the answer.”

Multiple homes were destroyed in Rafah, with the Israel Defense Forces launching missiles from helicopters. Ten dead bodies were pulled out of the wreckage. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering in the city.

Flaunting its genocidal intentions, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) levelled the Gaza headquarters of the United Nations Palestinian relief agency UNRWA. Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini posted images of the destruction with the comment, “UNRWA headquarters in Gaza, turned into a battlefield & now flattened. Another episode in the blatant disregard of international humanitarian law.”

[https://twitter.com/UNLazzarini/status/1812815014580928758]

This followed a fresh round of unsubstantiated allegations by Israel that the agency is harbouring hundreds of Hamas agents. Earlier accusations were the pretext for the imperialist powers to cut all funding to the organisation responsible for feeding, educating and providing healthcare to 5.9 million Palestinians across the Middle East.

UNRWA’s head of external relations Tamara al-Rifai told Al Jazeera the images were “shocking” and noted that 190 UNRWA facilities, “most of which served as shelters for displaced people”, had now been attacked, with 500 killed in these facilities protected by international law, and 1,600 wounded.

Another four Gazans were killed in a strike that destroyed a house on as-Salam Street in Deir al-Balah, five in al-Maghazi, and three on al-Mansoura Street in Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood, reduced to ruins by a continuous Israel Defense Forces assault in the last two weeks.

Describing the attack in Deir al-Balah, Walid Thabet said, “My mother, an elderly woman, was sitting with me upstairs. She went downstairs and after five minutes I pulled her out from under the rubble. We also pulled my sister out and my sister’s children too.

“Those who died are my mother, my sister, and my sister’s children. Children! One was two and a half years old, and the other two.”

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported an “intensification of bombardment” in the city, leaving behind “a trail of destruction, causing a great deal of panic and frustration among the residents of neighbouring houses. Deir al-Balah is where Palestinians have been told to go and seek refuge.”

The local municipality has warned it is no longer able to provide 700,000 people in the area with drinking water after running out of fuel.

Gaza’s water supply across the enclave, restricted by Israel’s siege even before the war, has been devastated. According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs says 67 percent of the strip’s water and sanitation system had been destroyed as of last month.

New and expectant mothers are especially affected. The UN reports that 95 percent do not have enough to eat, with miscarriages already three times more likely than before the war in February, according to the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health.

More than 13,000 women will give birth in Gaza in the next month and will have to rely on the three of the strip’s thirteen remaining hospitals (23 no longer function) providing any pregnancy care at all.

Madeleine McGivern of Care UK told the Guardian: “Women are giving birth without any pain relief whatsoever, living in fear, not being able to access any doctor or antenatal care, not knowing whether they’ll give birth in a boiling hot tent or, if they are able to go to a hospital, risk being hit by a bomb or shot by a sniper on the way there or the way back.”

Compounding the food and water crisis is the pollution caused by mountains of solid waste piling up amid the evisceration of Gazan society—330,000 tons across the whole territory, often within feet of refugee tent cities. Many Palestinians are forced to scavenge these sites for anything useful or saleable.

Speaking to the BBC, Dr Ahmed al-Fari, head of the children’s departments at Nasser Hospital, commented, “It is no secret that the biggest cause of intestinal infections currently occurring in the Gaza Strip is the contamination of the water supplied to these children.”

Piles of waste join mountains of earth and debris. According to a UN assessment, the near 140,000 destroyed building in Gaza (65 percent of them residential) have produced roughly 40 million tons of rubble, more than 15 years’ work for a fleet of 100 lorries to clear.

“The actual topography has changed,” one UN official told the Guardian last week, “There are hills where there were none. The 2,000lbs bombs dropped [by Israel] are actually altering the landscape.”

The United States has sent 14,000 of these 2,000lb bombs to Israel since October.

Roughly 10 percent of weapons dropped on Gaza fail to detonate on impact, according to Pehr Lodhammar, a former UN Mine Action Service chief for Iraq, leading, says Gaza’s Civil Defence agency, to “more than 10 explosions every week” of unexploded ordnance.

Amid the latest killings, it was the turn of David Lammy, foreign secretary in Britain’s new Labour Party government, to tour Israel and sprinkle perfumed phrases about “peace” and “stability” on its fascist regime and genocidal war.

Arriving in Israel Sunday, he waded through the blood to shake the hand of murderer-in-chief Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and say, “I’m here to push for a ceasefire. The loss of life over the last few months… is horrendous. It has to stop.”

A few more massacres later, he told the media ahead of a meeting with Netanyahu’s partner in crime President Isaac Herzog on Monday, “It’s important that, whilst we are in a war, that war is conducted according to international humanitarian law.”

Herzog told the press conference after the meeting, “The foreign secretary made clear that his country will continue to work and demand for the release of all the hostages … The bonds between the British and Israeli peoples are as strong and robust as they are historic and impactful—especially now, in facing the challenges ahead of us.”

Lammy told reporters an “assessment” into arms sales to Israel had “begun”.

To underscore the cynical character of such a pose, the Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that Lammy had given assurances that the UK would not withdraw its objections to the International Criminal Court’s application for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The objection to the arrest warrants for crimes against humanity and war crimes was first raised by the former Conservative government of Rishi Sunak, but at the time Lammy said Labour would drop the legal challenge. The US was reported as lobbying Labour to reverse this position, with all too predictable success.

16 July 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian territory – During its four-day incursion into the western parts of Gaza City, the Israeli army committed horrific atrocities against Palestinian civilians, including willful killings, extensive destruction and burning of civilian buildings and homes, and forced evacuation as part of the ongoing crime of genocide for the tenth consecutive month.

After invading the area at dawn on Monday, 8 July, Israeli army forces began to withdraw early on Friday, 12 July, from the Universities Area and the Sinaa’ Area, west of Gaza City. During this time, they launched numerous fire belts and engaged in indiscriminate shelling, stormed homes, and harassed residents. Reports indicated that over sixty people had been killed, with many bodies found in the streets and alleys, some of which were charred.

Euro-Med Monitor field crews are investigating reports that the Israeli army forces committed extrajudicial killings and unlawful executions of numerous residents, the majority of whom were women. These victims included two sisters, Maysoon Yaqoub Al-Ghalayini and Arwa Yaqoub Al-Ghalayini, as well as their sister Rafida Al-Ghalayini, who was left bleeding to death for two days without the Israeli forces allowing medical teams to reach her.

According to preliminary reports, the Israeli army killed entire families after raiding their homes in the Al-Sina’a area west of Gaza City. Those killed included Mustafa Ahmed Zaidiyeh, the two brothers Imad Khaled Zaidiyeh and Mahmoud Khaled Zaidiyeh, Abu Youssef Nasser Zaidiyeh, Fahmi Lulu, Jamalat Al-Shawa and her two sons, Ahmed Maher Al-Badri and Suha Maher Al-Badri, as well as six members of the Al-Khatib family.

Euro-Med Monitor teams documented the Israeli army torturing and severely beating Khaled Darwish Muhammad Zaidiyeh, 58, while he and several of his relatives were besieged in his home close to the industrial area, which was the army’s point of incursion on Monday, 8 July.

Khaled Zaidiyeh stated the following in his testimony to the Euro-Med Monitor crews: “(The soldiers) peed, put coffee on their urine, and made us drink it.” The children and women were forced out while crying. We were tortured and tied up, and the scars from the chains are still visible on us.  My nephew Mustafa, who was killed, asked to have his handcuffs taken off or loosened. But the soldiers refused and beat him all over his body. Anybody attempting to speak would face severe beating.”

He went on, “One of the soldiers put his leg over my head and started repeatedly stomping on it with full force. He then went to torture one more of the twenty-one people there before returning. My nephew’s face has swollen, despite suffering a heart problem, while the second who has special needs and was permitted to accompany the women. While I was lying on my stomach, one of the soldiers got up on top of me and began hitting me with his combat boots. I tried to calm down and be patient, but he kept jumping on top of me with his heavy weight and pressing his legs, aiming to break my bones.”

The soldiers then got a call and began to withdraw, while one of them threatened to return to me. All we could hear was our own voice as the soldiers broke the window glass of one of the houses. I thought they would make us step on the shattered glass, but they started shooting. Then they withdrew and left the area, threatening to kill us with quadcopters and snipers.”

A woman who wished to remain anonymous told the Euro-Med Monitor team: “The army opened fire on the house. We opened the door while raising the white flag. They forced the men to take off their clothes and assaulted them in front of us. My son was tired, so they beat him severely. Without bringing anything with us, we were forced to flee to the southern part of the Gaza Strip.”

According to documentation provided by Euro-Med Monitor teams, the Friends of the Patient Hospital was destroyed by the Israeli army for the second time, following its restoration approximately one month ago to serve the Gaza residents’ medical needs. The Israeli army also bombed the Al-Salam clinic, the only health centre in the Al-Sabra neighbourhood, south of Gaza City.

Along with demolishing and setting a number of homes on fire, the Israeli army also destroyed UNRWA schools near the industrial area, extensively damaging the classrooms, particularly the ground floors.

Based on observations and follow-up conducted by the Euro-Med Monitor team, it appears that the lack of equipment is making it difficult for rescue workers to recover victims from under the debris of the homes and buildings that were targeted by the Israeli army.

Additionally, testimonies were provided to Euro-Med Monitor regarding widespread thefts and robberies by Israeli army forces during home raids and forced evacuation of the locals, including large amounts of money and valuables.

The Israeli army has been looting gold jewellery and cash from homes it raids and from residents it forced to relocate to the south of the Gaza Valley, where they were forced to leave their bags and all of their belongings seized by the soldiers. These operations have been routinely carried out by the Israeli army when storming residential areas, raiding homes, and initiating random arrest campaigns against civilians.

Families Khudair and Jadallah members told the Euro-Med Monitor team that the Israeli army forces amassed and pilfered their personal belongings in bags, beating and detaining the men before driving the women and children out of the area and forcing them to evacuate to the central Gaza Strip.

Since the early hours of Monday, 8 July, the Israeli army has been waging a war of intimidation and forced displacement against the people of the Gaza City and its northern region. This has resulted in yet another massive wave of forced evacuation following military assaults and intense raids that the army has carried out as part of the genocide it has been committing since 7 October.

Under heavy rocket and shell fire in the industrial area, the Israeli army launched a ground incursion, directly targeting the nearly completely destroyed UNRWA headquarters and the headquarters of several other destroyed universities in western Gaza.

Subsequently, the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of large areas of Gaza City and forced the staff of the “Ahly Baptist” hospital to leave the area entirely. As a result, the only major hospital operating in Gaza for months was turned out of service.

Based on the aforementioned, all nations are required to fulfil their international obligations by enacting strong sanctions against Israel and severing all other types of political, financial, and military support and cooperation. This includes immediately halting arms transfers to Israel, including export permits and military aid; otherwise, these nations will be held accountable for the crimes that have been committed in the Gaza Strip, including genocide.

In order to ensure accountability, a comprehensive and impartial international investigation is required into the serious crimes and violations committed by the Israeli army forces against the Gaza Strip’s population and their property. These crimes and violations amount to fully-fledged, self-contained war crimes and crimes against humanity that cause serious harm and destruction to civilians and their livelihoods without justification or military necessity,

Additionally, the International Criminal Court ought to keep looking into any and all crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip; broaden its investigation into criminal responsibility, in order to hold all perpetrators accountable; issue arrest warrants for those responsible; and acknowledge and address Israel’s crimes in the Strip, as they are international crimes that fall under the purview of the International Criminal Court and are clearly crimes of genocide.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

14 July 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Julia Conley

The United Nations’ top expert on human rights in Palestine condemned the Israeli military as it resorted to a familiar excuse for the killing of nearly 100 Palestinians on Saturday in an area that had been designated as a “humanitarian zone”—just the latest massacre of dozens of people whom the Israel Defense Forces dismissed as collateral damage in attacks they claimed were targeting Hamas.

“The justification is always the same: ‘targeting Palestinian militants,’” said Francesca Albanese, U.N special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. “When is the world going to stop this death machine?”

Albanese was referring this time to the bombardment of al-Mawasi, a coastal area west of Khan Younis where hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents have been sheltering after fleeing cities including Rafah.

Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum described the attack as “a new massacre committed by the Israeli military,” with “five bombs and five missiles” hitting the area where Palestinians have been sheltering in makeshift tents for months.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported that at least 90 people had been killed in the attack, which the IDF claimed was based on “precise intelligence” and targeted Hamas commanders Mohammed Deif and Rafa Salama.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1812050444299985391]

“We have seen time and time again attacks on areas where there are displaced Palestinians in the tens of thousands,” reportedAl Jazeera‘s Hamdah Salhut. “This is a tactic that is commonly used by Israeli forces, saying civilians are being used as ‘human shields’ for Hamas figures, using that as justification for killing dozens of civilians.”

The Washington Post reported that it was “unclear” whether Deif, who has survived multiple assassination attempts by Israel, was killed in the attack.

Paramedics and children were reportedly among nearly 300 people who were wounded, and an official at Nasser Hospital told Al Jazeera that the facility had no more capacity to treat wounded patients.

The British charity Medical Aid for Palestine reported that it was “forced to temporarily evacuate one of our medical points near the area, which is intended to provide primary healthcare services, due to the insecurity.”

“MAP’s Mohammed Al Khatib in Khan Younis reports: ‘Al-Mawasi is heavily crowded and has a big market where people move around to try and secure their basic needs,’” said the group. “We have been warning for months that there is no safe place for anyone in Gaza amid Israel’s military bombardment.”

“A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them,” the Health Ministry told the Associated Press.

The AP assessed footage that showed a “huge crater” in the area where thousands of people had been ordered to evacuate to when the IDF began its full-scale assault on Rafah in May. Burnt-out cars, household belongings, and charred tents—like those seen in previous attacks on so-called “humanitarian zones” in al-Mawasi and Rafah—were left after the bombings.

Academic and writer Ori Goldberg said it was “impossible to exaggerate the level of criminality, immorality, and crass, murderous stupidity that come together in the massacre Israel carried out in al-Mawasi this morning.”

“Israel used wildly disproportionate force [to] assassinate two people,” said Goldberg. “Israel pushed the displaced Palestinians to Mawasi, defining it a ‘safe zone.’ Then, assuming it had a chance to assassinate Muhammad Deif, one of the most senior Hamas leaders supposedly hiding there, Israel bombed the ‘safe zone.’ Dozens were killed. The death of a single person does not legitimize the slaughter of dozens.”

Goldberg noted that the massacre came shortly after U.S. President Joe Biden announced Hamas and Israel were inching closer to a truce, with both sides agreeing to a “framework” for a cease-fire.

“There is a hostage deal on the table. Deif’s death will not bring about the collapse of Hamas; it will only make Hamas less willing to compromise,” said Goldberg. “Israel forces ‘evacuation,’ Israel bombs, Israel knows, Israel attacks and kills, Israel sets conditions, Israel balks. Israel has run out of options. It knows only death.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that as with previous attacks on designated safe zones, the IDF’s massacre was made possible partially by the political and material support of the United States and other Western countries.

“Israel’s far-right government carries out this mass slaughter of Palestinians secure in the knowledge that it will be supported and excused by the Biden administration and that American bombs and taxpayer funds will continue to flow,” said Nihad Awad, national director of CAIR. “President Biden’s continuing support for and silence about the genocide gives a green light for more Israeli abuses and war crimes. President Biden must stop enabling these daily massacres and end our nation’s complicity in genocide.”

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

14 July 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Prof Ilan Pappé

The sight of the children buried under the rubble, salvaged by older children, is enough for me and, I am sure, for anyone who was ever silenced by the lobby, not to cave in but to overcome any hurdles they put in our way of speaking truth to power. 

9 Jul 2024 – Nine months into the Israeli genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip, it seems that its parallel attack on freedom of speech on Palestine is continuing with intensity, making it difficult for the general public to appreciate the reality in Palestine beyond the manipulated and distorted coverage offered by mainstream media.

It is clear that we are facing a coordinated campaign led by the pro-Israeli lobby and aimed at continuing the historical denial of the ongoing Nakba.

The campaign began with a warning to many journalists and academics in the West not to mention the historical, let alone moral, context to the Hamas assault on Israel on October 7. A warning was even directed at the General Secretary of the United Nations for merely mentioning the historical context.

Analyzing the unnoticed acts of repression put in place since October 7 is very important because it allows us to raise an important question: is the pro-Israeli lobby still powerful enough to silence free speech on Palestine or has the October 7 events exposed its deficiencies?

This question prodded me to write a 500-page history of the lobby, as I believe the answer can be best given by providing a historical context, which enables us to appreciate the nature of the lobbying efforts today and predict their future impact.

Immediately after October 7, not only it was prohibited to mention the context, but also any criticism of the Israeli actions in Gaza was silenced.

All over the global north, universities ousted students simply for being members of outfits such as Students for Justice in Palestine. They even disinvited academics or authors who dared to criticize Israel. Similar actions were taken against journalists and people in public services, even those who accompanied their criticism with a condemnation of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

In the first wave of suppression, some venues across the United States canceled pre-planned film festivals or annual conferences on human rights.

It felt like being back in the 1960s when the word ‘Palestine’ in the US was equated with terrorism. This equation, at least in the US, is not valid anymore among the general public, painfully only once the full picture of the horrors of Gaza reached the American television screens. The censorship and suppression, however, are still there.

The assault on freedom of speech on Palestine also appeared in cyberspace. Meta, which runs most of the social media platforms, was and still is active in silencing voices in support of the Palestinians on both Instagram and Facebook.

The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch recorded more than 1,000 takedowns of Palestine-related content on these two platforms by the end of 2023. According to the organization, only one of the contents removed could have been considered inappropriate.

What is even more worrying is the claim by the organization that the suppression of free speech by Meta is systematic and global.

Suppression was also intensified at a legislative level. The American Congress is discussing a bill under the name “anti-Semitism Awareness Act”. There are already bills against antisemitism, so the aim of the new legislation is merely to weaponize antisemitism and remove any criticism of Israel from the categories protected by the First Amendment.

Unbelievably, according to the new bill, antisemitism can also be defined as accusing someone of double standards over Israel or “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination”.

Such legislation was translated into brutal police actions in many parts of the world against pro-Palestinian protests and encampments. This was accompanied by intensive scrutiny of messages, on any platform, of employees in private and public sectors who dared to show solidarity with the Palestinian victims of the genocide in Gaza.

I do not recall being asked to help, just in Britain alone, with so many different cases of lawyers trying to defend clients who were persecuted for their messages online. Most of these messages stated well-known facts and legitimate emotions of anger, sorrow, and hope.

As readers may know, my own freedom of speech on Palestine was curtailed in more than one way.

Here are just a few examples: the French publisher Fayard, bought by a Zionist billionaire in 2023, stopped printing and disseminating my book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

In just another example, I was detained for a couple of hours at the Detroit airport to be interrogated. Additionally, most of my lectures in Germany and the Czech Republic, to mention a few countries, were canceled. Luckily, activists and organizers were good enough to find new venues at the last moment.

Just recently, I learned that Amazon UK (unlike Amazon US) is doing everything in its power not to sell my book Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, probably because the British e-commerce giant is indeed, under the influence of the lobby the book describes. So far, none of my books on Amazon were treated that way, but here we are now.

A similar experience to the one I had in the US was faced by Ghassan Abu Sitta, the rector of Glasgow University when he traveled to Germany and the Netherlands. It seems no one is immune to such a treatment, regardless of their academic position or professional reputation. All in the service of a lobby that attempts to prevent us from speaking freely on Palestine in the West.

Thus, nine months since October 7, the efforts to silence support for the Palestinians in general and those in the Gaza Strip in particular have intensified.

These efforts are not motivated by moral imperatives and are not articulated as moral arguments. They are exercised through the employment of sheer force of mafia-like intimidation to silence all messengers whose message is disliked by the lobby.

This, however, should not be seen only as a challenge or a setback. The ferocity with which the lobby assaults any attempt to show solidarity with the Palestinians cannot hide its failure to manage the swelling support that is exponentially growing by the day.

The abundance of Palestinian flags in all the celebrations of the popular front after their amazing success in the French national elections; the growing isolation of the Israeli academia; the rulings of the ICJ and ICC are just a few of many indications that show that it would be impossible to deny Palestine or silence the Palestinians and their solidarity movement.

The lobby does not have enough resources and capacity to deal with the widespread solidarity. It is indeed the success of the mobilization of so many people on behalf of Palestine that forces the lobby to use its most destructive weapons and tactics.

As I am writing this piece, I read the news of the fourth Israeli attack on an UNRWA school in Nuseirat, which left sixteen people dead.

The school hosted refugees from other parts of the Strip who were told that was a safe space.

The sight of the children buried under the rubble, salvaged by older children, is enough for me and, I am sure, for anyone who was ever silenced by the lobby, not to cave in but to overcome any hurdles they put in our way of speaking truth to power.

After all, when it comes to the truth, Palestinians have nothing to lose.

Prof Ilan Pappé was born in Haifa, Israel in 1954. He graduated from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1979 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 1984.

15 July 2024

Source:  transcend.org

By Steven Sahiounie

Lesson to be learned from Syria: never participate in any U.S. [proxy] war abroad using terrorists as assets.

8 Jul 2024 – Kessab is a tiny Syrian village on the Turkish border. In February 2011, Em Ahmad, a 30-year plus resident of Kessab, was coming back to Kessab through the international border crossing at Kessab. She and her family were shocked to see white tents set-up in Turkey on the border as the passed by. The so-called ‘popular uprising’ in Daraa, Syria did not begin until March 2011, and Em Ahmad had no inkling of the purpose of the empty tent community set-up waiting for Syrian refugees.  Later, she would understand the role those tents played, and the fact they were ready long before any Syrian in Daraa, 371 kilometers away, would take to the streets.

Syria is now in the first steps toward ending the nightmare that destroyed many parts of the country, caused the largest migration since WW2, caused millions to become refugees living in tents in neighboring countries, displaced half of the country, and killed and injured hundreds of millions.

Recently, Turkey has changed their policy on Syria in an effort to restore diplomatic relations with Damascus. The Prime Minister of Iraq, al-Sudani, announced he expects a meeting between the Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad very soon.

In order to restore the relationship, Turkey must stop its support of terrorists, must withdraw its troops and mercenaries from all areas in Syria, which include Idlib and north of Aleppo. The first steps have been taken by Turkey as they have ended support of the terrorists in Idlib, and ended support of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) north of Aleppo.

This drastic change by Turkey was met recently by violent clashes between Turkish soldiers and Turkish civilians, and terrorists and their Syrian civilian supporters, who pulled down Turkish flags and step-on them, attacked Turkish vehicles and Turkish drivers, and attacked a Turkish soldier and made him kneel and kiss the 3-stared flag of the FSA. In Idlib, the terrorists burned up Turkish vehicles owned by Turkish citizens working in Idlib officially, which resulted in all Turkish civil servants being evacuated from Idlib. Syrian refugees in Turkey were attacked by angry Turkish citizens who view the Syrians as unwelcome vandals.

North of Aleppo, there had been roads controlled by the Turkish backed FSA, but a new order came from Ankara to relinquish the roads back to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA). These beginning steps pave the way to a restored relationship between Ankara and Damascus.

The UN played a role in maintaining Idlib as a bastion for the armed opposition.  Repeatedly, the UN pressured Russia and Syria to allow humanitarian aid to enter Idlib from Turkey. The UN argued there were 3 million civilians who needed food and medical supplies, and while that is true, the aid passed exclusively through the hands of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). If you were a civilian supporter of HTS, you got your aid, but if you had any complaint, you got nothing.  Civilians were forced to buy the food they needed from the shopping mall, Al Hamra, where HTS leader, Mohammed al-Julani warehoused surplus aid to be sold. All the major international charities were in Idlib, and a number of them had serious problems with the terrorists who controlled their work there.  For example, the terrorists would not allow female civilians to participate in aid programs which would teach them employment skills.  According to the FSA, once called “McCain’s Army”, women were to stay at home in the kitchen and bedroom.

Turkey was a close ally of the US and a fellow NATO member. Turkey was directed to play a vital role in the ‘regime change’ project orchestrated by US President Barak Obama. The Syrian project was just one piece in the larger ‘Arab Spring’ in which the US and NATO attempted to create a ‘New Middle East’.

Libya was attacked and destroyed by the US-NATO war machine, and has not recovered. Tunisia was transformed into a Muslim Brotherhood administration, Egypt’s election was rigged by the US in order to place a Muslim Brotherhood president at the helm, and Syria was attacked in a ‘regime change’ project which failed. Tunisia and Egypt have both since recovered from the US meddling in ‘Arab Spring’ and have kick-out the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria fought back and refused to change a secular government into a sectarian nightmare to suit US interests.

General Wesley Clark, former NATO commander, said in a video, that he visited the Pentagon and was told they had plans to ‘take out seven countries’. Syria was one of them.

Serena Shim, an American-Lebanese journalist in Turkey on assignment, witnessed a UN World Food Program truck delivering armed terrorists from Jibhat al-Nusra (now called HTS) across the border from Turkey to Syria. After reporting her explosive news, she was killed in Turkey when a cement truck rammed her small rental car, and the driver of the truck has never been located.

HTS has occupied Idlib, and holds 3 million residents as human shields. Idlib is the last remaining territory occupied by the armed Syrian opposition. Recently, the residents of Idlib took to the streets to protest their treatment under the Julani iron-fist rule. Qatar, one of the last bastions of Muslim Brotherhood influence, stated they no longer support Julani, and were sympathetic of the protesters who voiced their grievances after arrests and torture of civilians by Julani’s terrorists.

Despite the $10 million bounty on the head of Julani, issued by the US FBI, American media has visited Julani to interview him, while he sported a western suit and tie, in an effort to re-brand his image. In the end, the US project to morph a Radical Islamic terrorist into a Washington approved leader in Syria failed, as did the entire Obama war on Syria.

Robert S. Ford, former US Ambassador to Syria, has been very critical of Obama’s failure in Syria. Ford feels the US seriously underestimated the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), and bet that the army would break under the pressure from the Muslim Brotherhood supporters in the street. The SAA never broke. Ford had wanted the US to enter Syria militarily, but Obama refused to fulfill his promises.

US Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, was the biggest force behind arming and funding the terrorists fighting in Syria. McCain made several illegal visits to Idlib and met personally with the terrorists and their commanders. Even though he hated the Mexican migrants coming into Arizona illegally, that didn’t stop him from doing the same and crossing from Turkey into Idlib without any visa or border controls. He believed in the FSA, and lobbied for them in Congress. The FSA sold fellow Arizonian, Kayla Mueller, to ISIS in Aleppo. She was later raped and tortured by the ISIS leader, Baghdadi, and died in a US airstrike.

Syria is now in a period of transition. The battlefields have been silent since 2017, but the recovery process was not allowed to begin due to US sanctions on Syria which prevent supplies, or investments being sent to Syria other than strictly humanitarian aid.

Lessons to be learned from Syria: never participate in any US war abroad using terrorists as assets; never support sectarian conflicts; never force democracy on any people from the barrel of a gun.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist.

15 July 2024

Source:  transcend.org

By Caitlin Johnstone

The brain rot of their worldview has a guy with an actual rotting brain as its official representative.

13 Jul 2024 – At the NATO summit in Washington on Thu [11 Jul] the US president referred to Ukraine’s President Zelensky as “President Putin”, referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump”, and said he is “following the advice of my commander-in-chief” on important military decisions.

This man’s brain clearly does not work. It is done. Finito. No mas. Dementia has sunk in the rear naked choke, and Joe Biden’s neurology is tapping.

Americans are watching live proof that their country does not require a president with functioning gray matter in order for decisions to get made and policies to be enacted in the Executive Branch of the US government. The wars and militarism have ticked on uninterrupted, the authoritarian agendas keep getting rolled out, and the same political status quo continues to be advanced. You could not ask for more conclusive proof that for all the fuss that gets made about US presidents and presidential elections, it is nothing more than a figurehead position for an empire that is not actually run by its official elected government.

And it’s only fitting that the US president’s brains should be leaking out his ears even as the brain rot of the ideology which gave rise to him is exposed in front of the entire world.

There is a kind of poetical beauty in the fact that the so-called “moderates” of western liberalism are cheerleading for the re-election of a half-dead dementia patient while his administration facilitates an active genocide in Gaza, perpetuates a world-threatening proxy war in Ukraine, prepares for war with Lebanon, and militarizes with increasing aggression against Russia and China, all while killing the earth’s ecosystem and contributing to the poverty, sickness and oppression of the American people at home. The brain rot of their worldview has a guy with an actual rotting brain as its official representative.

The Biden administration has completely discredited every value that western liberals claim to uphold. Peace. Justice. Human rights. A free press. Opposition to racism. Opposition to tyranny. These freaks just plum forgot that genocide is a bad thing on October 7, and probably won’t remember again until the imperial propaganda machine needs to use that accusation against the next government that the empire has targeted for regime change.

The “moderates” and “centrists” of the western world are in reality violent extremists, and not just violent extremists but the most murderous and destructive extremist group on the face of this planet. Not one group on Washington’s list of designated terrorist organizations has a body count that’s even a tiny fraction of what the US empire has racked up just in the 21st century alone.

This is the political ideology that Biden has aligned with throughout the entirety of his far-too-long career, from when he was just a baby swamp monster elected to the Senate at the age of 30 all the way until now as he watches all the cognitive flotsam and jetsam of his decades of Beltway soul-selling blur together like oil paints on the palette of his ruined cerebral matter.

This is who Joe Biden is. This is who western liberals are. They are the carnage, starvation and disease in Gaza. They are the biosphere strangling to death under the boot of ecocidal capitalism. They are the nuclear missiles being rolled into position around the world. They are a dying brain and a dying heart on a dying world of their own making.

Hopefully the death of this toxic, omnicidal ideology won’t be too far behind the death of Joe Biden.

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper.

15 July 2024

Source:  transcend.org

By Richard Falk

9 Jul 2024 – This is a modified version of the questions/answers by Washington-based Al Jazeera journalist Mohamed Elmenshawy about the plea bargain release of Julian Assange.

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1- What do you make of the plea deal reached between the US government and Assange?

The release of Julian Assange is long overdue, although it would have been more widely welcomed at this time if it had not been achieved within the framework of a plea bargain. More appropriate, and far less ambivalent, would have been a presidential pardon that kept the door open for future investigative journalists with the courage to reveal and comment upon inconvenient truths.

As it was, Assange after being released from prison was obliged to stop in the small city of Saipan in an Northern   Marianas Island in the Western Pacific, which is actually US territory, and face espionage charges in a criminal court. To gain his freedom after 14 years on the run and in various types of confinement, Assange’s guilty plea bargain required him to plead guilty on one of a series charges against him. The US Government seemed content with Assange’s acceptance of the charge of conspiring unlawfully to obtain and disseminate classified materials.

Despite securing this guilty plea, the prosecution had agreed that it would not seek to have Assange made subject to any further punishment. His time in the UK maximum security prison at Belmarsh Prison for the past five years was apparently treated as sufficient jail time, allowing the government to claim that US espionage laws were being enforced in response to Assange’s unlawful behavior. Assange’s long confinement in the Ecuador Embassy in London for the nine years preceding confinement in Belmarsh during the long extradition legal process amounted also to a punishment for the dubious contention that Wikileaks rather than being dissident journalism was espionage, despite Assange’s diligent redaction of any material that might endanger the safety of persons named in the released classified documents. Assange was also imprisoned for 50 weeks in the UK after jumping bail to avoid being extradited to Sweden to face some alleged criminal  charges  of an ambiguous sexual assault.

While there exist humanitarian and principled political reasons to celebrate Assange’s freedom there are also grounds for concern and criticism. To begin with there were rather well-sourced reports that the CIA considered kidnapping or even assassinating Assange during his prolonged stay in Ecuador’s Embassy. These concerns were aggravated by insinuations that the US had helped engineer a change of government in Ecuador that resulted in the withdrawal of its grant of asylum to Assange in London. The most damaging materials that was disclosed by Wikileaks came to Assange by way of a US Army Intelligence Officer, Chelsea Manning (previously known as Bradley Manning), who transmitted 750,000 classified and diplomatic documents to Assange relating to various incidents in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that confirmed and documented US reliance on criminal tactics that amounted to international war crimes. Manning was court-martialed for violating the Espionage Laws and was imprisoned from 2010-1017 for leaking classified materials to Assange. Her prison sentence was commuted by Obama in 2017, releasing Manning from serving out her sentence.

By treating such disclosures as espionage, as is the effect of Assange’s guilty plea, is to send all dissident journalists an intimidating signal that they could be subject to a criminal prosecution in the future. Mainstream journalists frequently address pro-government issues that are shaped by privileged access to classified government documents without facing such threats. The difference in treatment of dissident journalists whose views rarely are represented on influential establishment media platforms in the West arises from their political slant rather than from their classified character. In this instance the media performs, especially in relation to foreign policy and national security, operate as an instrument of state propaganda. In contrast, Wikileaks is primarily motivated by a radical anti-state, left populist orientation supportive of greater transparency with respect to government policy in the conduct of foreign policy.

This dissident identity leads some commentators on the political right to consider Assange to be an ‘anarchist hacker’ rather than a true journalist, and as such, deserving of punishment to the full extent of the law. They even object to the current arrangement governing his release as endangering future national security interests and the safety of those citizens who might be exposed by public disclosure, as well as those with whom US intelligence, diplomatic, and military personnel collaborate in foreign countries.

Other notable commentators argue that there exists an inevitable fuzzy line separating journalism from espionage, ‘a gray zone’ that exhibits overlapping tensions between guarding legitimate state secrets and protecting free expression. Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School has described this as a tension between ‘national security hawks’ and ‘First Amendment absolutists,’ implying that those sensible moderates who allegedly determine policy must make contextual judgments based on the character of information disclosed, the sincerity and prudence of the actor charged with release, and the effects on US credibility and security of the disclosures.

Such reasonableness, in my judgment, undermines the importance of safeguarding those that take risks to inform the citizenry about the wrongdoings of government, which contributes to the democratic quality of state/society relations. There are limits to permissible disclosure, but they should be administered with a due regard for restoring democratic vitality in an era where most of what governments hide is to keep these inconvenient truths from being known by the national citizenry and to avoid accountability procedures by what social forces ensure that government policy is respectful of applicable law. In this sense, the whistleblowing rationale challenges government claims that state secrets are integral to national security. Statist apologists purport to be concerned about sensitive information being accessed by foreign enemy governments in ways that hamper the discretion of the state to adopt pragmatically justified policies and practices.

The balancing of relevant opposing interpretations would be more persuasive if it took account of the specific identity of the state whose secrets were being revealed and the purposes of the disclosure. In this instance, the United States was acting extraterritorially in ways that harmed the people and public interests of a variety of foreign states. This is quite different from the effort of vulnerable countries, such as Iran, to view breaches of its national security plans and capabilities as crimes that deserved punishment. Such distinctions lend support to views that regard violations of constraints on disclosure as being in a grey zone that depends on interpretation and analysis of specific cases.

2- And what do you make of its timing?

It is impossible to separate the timing of this plea bargain from the presidential elections in the US. Releasing Assange relieves Biden of the burden of answering questions about a seemingly vindictive pursuit of a public spirited individual who as Australian citizen acting outside was arguably not even subject to US espionage laws, and has been forced to live a fugitive existence for the past 14 years. It is helpful to appreciate that Assange was a non-citizen acting outside the United States whose behavior and alleged criminal acts that would normally be treated as beyond the proper reach of US espionage laws, especially as the classified documents were voluntarily transmitted to him rather than stolen.

A final point powerfully made by Chris Hedges is that Assange owes his freedom, belated and grudging as it is, to the sustained support of people demonstrating on his behalf throughout the world. Without this display of people power exercised on behalf of the global public interest Hedges argues that there is every reason to suppose that if US prosecutors had earlier succeeded with their extradition efforts, Assange would be prosecuted and sent to jail for the rest of his life (he could potentially have been sentenced to 175 years in prison if found guilty by a court of all charges brought against him), or at best made to hide shamefully from American law enforcement efforts virtually forever. As important as it is to acknowledge the role of people in the streets demonstrating to demand Assange’s  freedom is a recognition of the degree to which the demonstrators were affirming the acts of Assange as well as the individual. Assange was disclosing to the world what citizens of a genuine democratic world order were entitled to know and act upon.

The Assange case, following the example of Daniel Ellsberg in relation to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, shows us above all, how important it is to have brave individuals dedicated to transparent governance that is respectful of international law. It also reveals the strong support ordinary people lend to those truth-tellers and whistleblowers like Assange and Chelsea Manning.  A viable democracy, more than ever in this digital age of robotics and AI, depends on governmental truthfulness and maximum transparency, this depends on protecting the role of dissident journalism and engaged citizenries. A frightening dimension of danger in these days are  growing credible fears of stumbling into World War III. This is becoming a major public concern in the US and elsewhere as war mongers in Washington seem to be pushing tension toward military confrontations in a whole series of flashpoints around the world. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has repeatedly warned of such dangers, suggesting the world is but one calculation away from a war fought with nuclear weapons.

Especially, in relation to geopolitical actors, formally freed from a legal duty to act within the framework of the UN Charter, we the people need to lend populist forms of support to the Assanges and Ellsbergs among us.

Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute.

15 July 2024

Source:  transcend.org

By Dr Ram Puniyani

After the mandate of recent Lok sabha elections (2024), the parliament has become a real ground where the voice of opposition also has a space. In the debate following the President’s Address, Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of opposition responded by outlining the various problems facing the country. One part of his speech, which probably has been expunged from the proceedings related to the nature of Hinduism. As per him Hinduism is based on truth and non violence. “India is a country of non-violence, and not of fear. All our great men have spoken about non-violence and overcoming fear.” Gesturing towards the benches of BJP MPs, Gandhi added: “Those who call themselves Hindus speak all day about violence, hate and untruth.”

Since then many protests by Sadhus have taken place against Rahul’s statement. In Ahmedabad Congress office was attacked. RSS Combine is spreading that Rahul has called all Hindus violent etc. On the other side Rahul has elaborated that what he means by Hinduism is based on truth, non violence and love. RSS ideologues are taking a sweep that Nehru to Rahul Gandhi’s ideology is out of touch with reality. As per them they have restricted only to minority questions to preserve their vote bank.

As such from the INDIA block many have stood with Rahul’s elaboration of the humanistic view of Hinduism. There is some overlap between the use of the word Hinduism and Hindutva currently. As Uddhav Thackeray said that his views on Hindutva are the same as Rahul elaborated (about Hinduism). RSS ideologues also criticize Nehru for starting his work of Sampradayikata Virodhi Abhiyan (Campaign against communalism) as being directed against RSS! They also take Nehru on for opposing President Rajendra Prasad’s inaugurating the Somanth temple. They claim that RSS hindutva derives from Dayanand Sarswati, Swami Vivekanand, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Shyama Prasad Mukerjee. As such RSS ideology does not have much to do with ideologies of Dayanand Sarswati and Swami Vivekanand, except using their names to cover their ideology.

As Hinduism is not a prophet based religion many interpretations of the same have been used. The very word Hindu is missing in the Holy Hindu scriptures, Vedas, Upnishad, Gita or Manu smriti. The word was coined by those coming from West of Sindhu, for whom the word S was used in a restricted manner and for S they used to pronounce H. Sindhu became Hindu and the word initially denoted the area spread from Sindhu river to sea. The earlier religious tendencies prevalent here were Vedic religion (which also can be labeled as Brahmanism), Ajivikas, Tantra, Nath, Shaiva, Buddhism and Jainism in the main.

Later the word Hindu became a conglomerate of different tendencies (barring Buddhism and Jainism) prevailing here. Except Brahmanism the other tendencies were called Shramans. The main difference between Brahmanism and Shramanism was the presence of caste and gender hierarchy in Brahmanism. The construction of the term Hinduism has been well explained by historian D. N. Jha in his Presidential address of Indian History Congress 2006. He points out “Of Course the Word (Hindu, added) was in use in pre colonial India, but it was not before late eighteen or early 19^th Century that it was appropriated by British scholars.” Since then it has found wider use. From here on the term was used for all in the subcontinent except for those who were Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians.

As there were no rigid boundaries, the Brahmanical stream projected Vedas and Manusmriti as sacred scriptures. The major understandings of Hinduism also varied. For Ambedkar Hinduism is dominated by Brahmanism, caste system. That’s what led him to burn Manusmiriti. Mahatma Gandhi had on other hand called himself a Sanatani Hindu and wrote in Young India on 6^th October 1921 “Hinduism tells everyone to worship God according to his own faith or Dharma, and so it lives at peace with all the religions.” A unique concept for interfaith relations and pluralism! Now Rahul Gandhi while talking about Hinduism harps on truth, love and non violence as being the core of Hinduism.

The word Hinduta was coined by Chandranath Basu in 1892 and linked it with the idealism of attaining spiritual heights. At the political level of this word Hindutva was introduced and defined by Savarkar in his book ‘Essentials of Hindutva’. (1923) His Hindutva is based on Aryan race, this Holy land (from Sindhu to Seas) and Culture (Brahmanical). Savarkar was very critical of Buddhism’s non violence and attributed India’s weakness to non violence propagated by Buddhism. This is a totally warped up understanding of our History. There was no country in the modern sense, and even if we grant Kingdoms equal to country we need to remember Emperor Asoka adopted Buddhism and his empire was the largest in Ancient India. He defined Hindu as one who regarded this land as his fatherland and Holy land.

RSS takes off from Savarkar and regards Islam and Christianity as foreign religions and upholds the ancient Holy Scriptures (Manu Smriti e.g.). RSS has made violence as part of its creed and its head office has an exhibition of various armaments, which are worshipped on the Dussera day. RSS shakhas have spread Hate by demonizing Muslim kings like Khilji, Babar, Aurangzeb and glorified Hindu Kings like Rana Pratap, Shivaji and Prithviraj Chauhan. It had also been critical of the national movement as people of all religions participated in it. It claims to represent the Hindus, as it takes up the emotive issues like temple destructions, Cow beef, and forcible conversions. The Hate spread by RSS was pointed out by none other than Sardar Vallabh bhai Patel after banning RSS in 1948, “All their speeches were full of communal poison, as a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji.”

While leaders like Mahatma Gandhi to Rahul Gandhi have expanded and enhanced the humane aspect of Hinduism, the Savarkar-RSS have treaded the path of hate and consequent violence. While Ambedkar stands to oppose the Brahmanical domination of Hindu practice, Mahatma Gandhi to Rahul are giving an inclusive and non violent meaning to Hinduism.

11 July 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The dishonour board is long.  Advisors from Australia, account chasing electoral strategists, former Australian cabinet ministers happy to draw earnings in British pounds.  British Conservative politicians keen to mimic their cruel advice, notably on such acid topics as immigration and the fear of porous borders.

Ghastly terminology used in Australian elections rhetorically repurposed for the British voter: “Turning the Back Boats”, the “Rwanda Solution”.  Grisly figures such as Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Rishi Sunak, showing an atavistic indifference to human rights.  The cruelty and the cockups, the failures and the foul-ups.  Mock the judges, mock the courts.  Soil human dignity.

All this, to culminate in the end of the Rwanda Solution, declared by the new Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, as “dead and buried before it even started”.  Yet it was a sadistic policy of beastly proportion, offering no prospect of genuine discouragement or deterrence to new arrivals, stillborn in execution and engineered to indulge a nasty streak in the electorate.

In April 2022, the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, announced the Asylum Partnership Arrangement with Rwanda, ostensibly designed “to contribute to the prevention and combating of illegally facilitated and unlawful cross border migration by establishing a bilateral asylum partnership”.

Mysteriously, British officials suddenly found Rwanda an appropriate destination for processing asylum claims and resettling refugees, despite Kigali doing its bit to swell the ranks of potential refugees.  In June 2023, the UK Court of Appeal noted the risks presented to asylum seekers, notably from ill-treatment and torture, arguing that the British government would be in breach of the European Convention on Human rights in sending them into Kigali’s clutches.  In November that year, the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion.

These legal rulings did not deter the government of Rishi Sunak.  With lexical sophistry bordering on the criminal, the Safety of Rwanda bill was drafted to repudiate what the UK courts had found by denying officials and the judiciary any reference to the European Convention of Human Rights and the UK’s own Human Rights Act 1998 when considering asylum claims.

The bookkeeping aspect of the endeavour was also astonishing.  It envisaged the payment of some half a billion pounds to Kigali in exchange for asylum seekers.  The breakdown of costs, not to mention the very plan itself, beggared belief.  The Home Office would initially pay £370 million under the Economic Transformation and Integration Fund, followed by a further £20,000 for every relocated individual.  Once the risibly magic number of 300 people had been reached, a further £120 million would follow.

Operational costs for each individual kept in Rwanda would amount to £150,874 over the course of five years, ceasing in the event a person wished to leave Rwanda, in which case the Home Office would pay £10,000 to assist in the move.

With biting irony, the UK government had demonstrated to Rwanda that it could replace the supposedly vile market of people smuggling in Europe with a lucrative market effectively monetising asylum seekers and refugees in exchange of pledges of development.

By February 2024, according to the National Audit Office, the UK had paid £220 million to Rwanda, with a promise of another £50 million each year over three years.  It was a superb return for Kigali, given that no asylum seekers from the UK had set foot in the country.  When asked at the time why he was hungrily gobbling up the finance, Paul Kagame feigned serenity.  “It’s only going to be used if those people will come.  If they don’t come, we can return the money.”

With an airy contemptuousness, the Kagame government has refused to return any of the monies received in anticipation of the policy’s full execution.  Doris Uwicyeza Picard, the central figure coordinating the migration partnership with the UK, was blunt: “We are under no obligation to provide any refund.  We will remain in constant discussions.  However, it is understood that there is no obligation on either side to request or receive a refund.”

In another statement, this time from deputy spokesman for the Rwandan government, Alain Mukuralinda, the sentiment bordered on the philosophical: “The British decided to request cooperation for a long time, resulting in an agreement between the two countries that became a treaty.  Now, if you come and ask for cooperation and then withdraw, that’s your decision.”

In an official note from Kigali, the government haughtily declared that the partnership had been initiated by the UK to address irregular migration, “a problem of the UK, not Rwanda.”  Rwanda, for its part, had “fully upheld its side of the agreement, including with regard to finances”.  Redundantly, and incredulously, the note goes on to claim that Kigali remained “committed to finding solutions to the global migration crisis, including providing safety, dignity and opportunity to refugees and migrants who come to our country.”

The less than subtle message in all of this: Rwanda is ready to keep cashing in on Europe’s unwanted asylum seekers, whatever its own record and however successful the agreement is. Kagame has no doubt not lost interest in Denmark, that other affluent country keen on outsourcing its humanitarian obligations.  While Copenhagen abandoned its partnership with Rwanda in January 2023 regarding a similar arrangement to that reached with the UK, it is now showing renewed interest, notably after hosting a high-level conference on immigration.

In opening the conference on May 6, the Social Democratic Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, speaking in language that could just as easily have been associated with any far right nationalist front, decried the “de facto” collapse of the “current immigration and asylum system”.  Those in the Rwandan treasury will be rubbing their hands in anticipation.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

11 July 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Many political analysts believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is buying time in Gaza and Lebanon with the hope that Donald Trump returns to the White House, following the next November elections.

Whether this is the case or not, Trump, this time around, is unlikely to influence the outcomes of the war, or to alter Israel’s fate.

US foreign policy seems to be ruled by two different outlooks, one dedicated to the whole world and another only to Israel. The first is driven by the famous, and oft-repeated quote by former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, that “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”

Israel, however, remains the exception, and the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza has, once more, demonstrated the truth of such a claim.

Though Washington fully shares Israel’s war objectives, it fundamentally disagrees with the concepts of the long war, and ‘total victory’, as championed by Netanyahu.

Two protracted US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq taught the Americans that neither the longevity of wars nor the lofty, unrealistic expectations alter inevitable outcomes.

In fact, many US officials, military generals and mainstream analysts have tried to warn Netanyahu, to no avail.

Destabilizing the Middle East at this specific historical juncture is simply bad for the US. It comes at a time when Ukraine is suffering serious weapons shortage, thus territorial losses, and at a time that the US-European allies are struggling under the weight of economic and political crises.

Since US-Israeli relations are governed according to a unique foreign policy paradigm, the Biden Administration continues to support Israel in every possible way so that it may carry on with a losing war.

The war is, of course, happening at the expense of over 125 thousand Palestinians, who, thus far, have been killed and wounded due to Israeli strikes, shelling and mass executions. Those dying from famine or disease are a different number, yet to be fully accounted for.

Washington is not perturbed by the Gaza genocide itself but by the outcome of the war on US plans in the Middle East, and the future of its forces, namely in Iraq and Syria. It is also concerned about its geostrategic sway in the region due to the unprecedented instability of the Red Sea.

Yet, Joe Biden continues to arm Israel and to provide a safety net to its dwindling economy. On April 20, the House passed a bill to provide $26.3 billion in assistance to Israel. Moreover, massive shipments of weapons continue to flow to Israel unhindered.

These explosives are not only destroying the whole of Gaza, but any chances that the US could ever regain any degree of credibility in the Middle East. Worse, US blind support for Israel has also shaken Washington’s position internationally.

So, what could Trump do that Biden did not?

Trump’s politics is abashedly Machiavellian. During his only term in office between 2017 and 2021, he served the role of the American genie, granting Israel’s every wish, though all such demands were flagrant violations of international law.

Trump’s pro-Israel policies included the recognition of all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the annexation of the Golan Heights and the recognition of all illegal Israeli Jewish settlements in the West Bank, among others.

But Netanyahu is also Machiavellian, a fact that irked Trump following his humiliating exit from the White House.

“I haven’t spoken to him since,” Trump said in an interview with Axios’ Barak Ravid in December 2021, in reference to the Israeli leader. “F**k him,” he said.

But now, both sides are trying to rekindle the old love affair. The Republican presidential candidate must be pleased with Netanyahu’s public criticism of the Biden Administration. In return, Trump is ready to “finish the job”, as he stated in the first presidential debate on June 27.

However, Trump’s return will do nothing to change Israel’s misfortunes since October 7, because Israel’s problems do not originate in Washington.

Israel’s crisis is multifaceted. It is unable to win the war in Gaza, despite the mass tragedy and destruction it has created there. It is also failing to change the rules of engagements in Lebanon due to the strength of its enemies, and the fact that its military is unable to fight and win on multiple fronts – let alone one.

Another dimension of the Israeli crisis is also internal: deep divisions in Israeli society, security apparatus and politicians. Not even Trump could possibly bridge the gap or end the polarization, which is likely to deepen in the future.

Even on the international front, Trump is likely to prove equally ineffective, again, simply because the Biden Administration has defied international consensus on Israel since the start of the war. The current US House of Representatives went as far as passing legislation to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) after its Prosecutor applied for arrest warrants against Israeli officials.

If Netanyahu thinks that Trump would offer him a better deal than that of Biden, he is mistaken. Biden has proved to be the greatest American enabler to Israel in its 76-year history.

Ironically, the US’ unquestioned support of Israel could be a contributing factor to its downfall.

“To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal,” Kissinger also said. He is not wrong.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

11 July 2024

Source: countercurrents.org